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Or they can in turn pass the problem on to the families.

The Department of Health and Human Services finalized the so-called family penalty in a rule last week. That means the test of whether insurance is affordable is based on the amount the worker pays for their health insurance — not on the cost of the policy for that worker’s whole family.

More specifically, if a worker can pay for employer-sponsored coverage for less than 9.5 percent of income, then dependents won’t be able to get subsidies on the health insurance exchanges that start next year. The health law uses a measure called the modified adjusted gross income to determine eligibility.

So to the dismay of many advocates of health coverage expansion, spouses and kids could fall through the cracks.

The Government Accountability Office, using 2009 data, estimated that about 7 percent of uninsured children — 460,000 — would remain uninsured because parents wouldn’t be able to afford coverage for the whole family.

Under the Affordable Care Act, firms with more than 50 workers have to offer affordable insurance to people who work more than 30 hours per week or else pay a $3,000 yearly penalty for those employees who receive government subsidies to buy insurance on the exchanges.

Consumer and child advocates had hoped the government would subsidize coverage for a worker’s family members on the exchanges if the worker couldn’t afford the employers’ family coverage. That would cost a lot of money, and the Obama administration opted against it.

Take a family of three in Florida making $40,000 a year — just over twice the federal poverty level. If one parent works part time and makes $10,000, and the other works full time for a large employer for $30,000, that company would have to offer an individual policy that wouldn’t cost the full-time employee more than $3,800 — 9.5 percent of household income.

For the individual — that shouldn’t be a problem. The average employee paid $951 for insurance in 2012, with the employer paying the rest of the premium, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. That’s well below that $3,800 threshold.

But employers often chip in less toward the family coverage. And while the health law does require them to offer coverage for kids — though not for all adults in the family — there’s no legal requirement that they make it affordable.

The average employee contribution for a family policy is $4,316 — which is steep for a lot of families. And if the employer isn’t subsidizing it, the cost could be $15,745 — in the case of the hypothetical Florida family, more than half of the primary breadwinner’s earnings.

In some states, the kids in that situation could get covered under the Children’s Health Insurance Program. But many states, including Florida, cut eligibility at 200 percent of poverty or below.